Editorial Policies

Section Policies

Long paper

Papers report significant new research results in computational linguistics. Submissions under this category are typically between 30 and 40 journal pages in length. Longer papers might, for example, describe the results of a large research project or dissertation. Each paper is reviewed by at least two experts in the field; all submissions, regardless of length, will be held to the same standards of technical and presentation quality.

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Short paper

Papers report significant new research results in computational linguistics. Short papers of around 15-20 journal pages in length are welcomed, and may be reviewed more quickly. Shorter papers might contain a description of a single experiment, algorithm, or other technical result. Each paper is reviewed by at least two experts in the field; all submissions, regardless of length, will be held to the same standards of technical and presentation quality.

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Survey article

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Squibs and Discussions

This category includes short articles reporting technical results, discussions of results, algorithms, or new computational linguistic data or tools of interest to the journal readership. Submissions should generally not exceed eight double-spaced pages.

Editors
  • Michael White
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Last Words

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Special Issue: Language in Social Media

Unchecked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Special Issue: Historical Linguistics

Unchecked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Special Issue: Multilingual and Interlingual Semantic Representations for Natural Language Processing

Unchecked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Special Issue on Language Learning, Representation, and Processing in Humans and Machines

Editors
  • Marianna Apidianaki
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Submission Guidelines

Submissions to CL may be made in any of the following categories: Papers, Survey Articles, Squibs and Discussions, and Last Words. We also publish Book Reviews.

Scope
Computational Linguistics is the longest running publication devoted exclusively to the design and analysis of natural language processing systems. Submissions to CL may be made in any of the following categories: Papers, Survey Articles, Squibs and Discussions, and Last Words. We also publish Book Reviews.

We have recently begun to receive an increasing number of submissions which fall outside the scope of the journal. Although the boundaries of what counts as appropriate for publication in Computational Linguistics do change over time, a general guideline is that we only carry material that makes a substantive contribution to the computational processing of language, generally from a natural language processing perspective.

Substantially extended versions of conference papers are acceptable as submissions; in such cases, the paper itself must state clearly how the work reported in the paper goes beyond the work reported in the earlier publication, so that both reviewers and readers can easily establish the novelty of the work reported.

Papers
Computational Linguistics accepts submissions of Long Papers and Short Papers

Long papers report significant new research results in computational linguistics; for example, describe the results of a large research project or dissertation. Each paper is reviewed by three experts in the field; all submissions, regardless of length, will be held to the same standards of technical and presentation quality.
Long Paper page lengths are typically 30-40 pages.

Short Papers report significant new research results in computational linguistics and might contain a description of a single experiment, algorithm, or other technical result. Each paper is reviewed by three experts in the field; all submissions, regardless of length, will be held to the same standards of technical and presentation quality.
Short paper page lengths are typically 15-20 pages.

Survey Articles
Survey Articles either provide a survey of the state of the art in a subfield of computational linguistics, allowing researchers to keep abreast of areas outside their main focus, and providing good starting points for those such as new doctoral students; or survey literature at the interfaces of the CL community, but not well represented in the CL journal, thus introducing relevant peripheral research to the journal's readership. Prospective authors of survey articles should first submit a summary proposal: see our Guidelines for Submission of Survey Articles for more details. The proposal should be submitted through the electronic submission system.

Formatting and Submission for Survey Articles: Follow the instructions as for submitting an article, but select "survey article" at the "journal section" prompt. If the proposal is accepted, the full survey paper itself should be submitted as a new submission with a new paper ID.

Squibs and Discussions
This category is reserved for very short articles that constitute more than programmatic versions of regular papers. Squibs should possess at least one of the following attributes:

  1. unexpectedness, e.g., a demonstration that a commonly accepted idea or method is flawed;

  2. genuine novelty, e.g., thus-far unnoticed language data that challenges current methods; and

  3. being targeted to a large segment of our readership.

  4. Papers about language resources may be acceptable provided the relevant resources are truly novel and of general interest.

Page length: Submissions must not exceed eight pages of content (with unlimited pages for references).

Last Words
In each issue of the journal we reserve a small number of pages for a personal opinion or provocative perspective on some aspect of the field of computational linguistics. You can see all previous Last Words pieces here. Contact the Editor directly if you are interested in submitting such a piece.

Page length: up to 10 pages in length.

What is submission protocol?

What is reviewing protocol?

Book Reviews
Anyone interested in reviewing a book, or in suggesting a book for review, should contact the Book Review Editor:
Aline Villavicencio, Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield
Email: a.villavicencio@sheffield.ac.uk

Submission and Reviewing Guidelines

  • Profile/Registration is required: create a profile here. If you already have an account, please log in to submit.
  • Authors submit papers here.
  • Further instructions and help can be found here.
  • If you have any problems not addressed by the above help page, email for help.

Manuscripts for Computational Linguistics should be submitted, in accordance with our Style Guidelines, The abstract of approximately 150-250 words. Manuscripts must be written in English. Please note that Computational Linguistics does not do double-blind review: authorship of submissions is known to the editorial board and the reviewers. In order for all submissions to be treated equally, authors are expected to include their names and affiliations on the first page of the submitted manuscript.

When submitting an article, indicate the type of submission: Long Paper, Short Paper, Squib, Survey, etc. When you are submitting to a special issue, indicate/select the name of the special issue.

By uploading an article to CL for review, you guarantee that it has not been copyrighted, has not been published in or, submitted for, publication to another refereed archival publication, and has not appeared in any conference or workshop proceedings. Failure to adhere to these guidelines will result in a rejection without review.

The submitted manuscript must be available for peer review without restriction. If any version of the paper has appeared, or will appear, in any other publication, the details of such publication must be declared to the Editor-in-Chief. Include venue, title, URL and date if available.

The final version of a paper tentatively accepted for publication must be accompanied by a Copyright Transfer Agreement signed by all of the authors or, in the case of a "work for hire," by the employer. This written transfer is necessary under the 1978 U.S. Copyright law.

Each paper is reviewed by three experts in the field; all submissions, regardless of length, will be held to the same standards of technical and presentation quality.

Computational Linguistics does not charge processing or publication charges.

Contacting the Editor-in-Chief
Wei Lu, CL Editor-in-Chief
Singapore University of Technology and Design
E-mail: editor@cljournal.org